a hippy chick

As I write this, I am preparing to move to Virginia in six days. Our lease is up on Saturday, and we always knew we needed to find a place to move since we don’t want to keep paying an elevated rate and having a huge auto. gas bill every month. But, we had pretty much settled on staying in Michigan until our debt was paid off.

Then, Sunday afternoon, everything changed. We were sitting in a little pizza parlor, where the service was good and the food was above average, talking about our options. Would it be this apartment or that house to rent? Then, at the end of our meal, our nice waiter presented us with our bill. We gave him our debit card, which was….declined. Gave him our credit card, which was….declined. To say it was an eye-opener is an understatement. For the first time, dh realized that something has to be done about this situation NOW. That his salary isn’t enough to feed us and put a roof over our heads, not with our debt situation. That we are going to stop going to pizza parlors and make pb&j’s at home, instead.

I called my friend, Jenn. Jenn is one of those friends I have been praying for all my life. She doesn’t think she’s that great, but she’s closer to me than most of my family is. She has no limitation on her big heart and I can’t tell you the number of times she’s driven 20 minutes to take me to the bank a mile away so I could get some money in our account before things bounced. So, this being no exception, Jenn bailed us out by giving the waiter her credit card info. over the phone. I don’t know what would’ve happened if we couldn’t have found a way to pay it. Anyway, I owe her again-bigtime.

That night I made a call to my big sister, the doctor, the responsible one, the one who decided to go to medical school at age 40 and who, at age 52, is finally able to clear off her humongeous student loan debts this year. Predictably, she said “come on down” and put my name in at her hospital to get some kind of a job with benefits. Sometimes it sucks being the baby of the family because you can never do for anyone else, it seems. I need them more than they need me, and it’s always been that way.

Plans are to fly me and lil pill to Virginia next week, and to stay with big sis and mom (who’s there until next summer) until I get a good job. Then big sis will buy a house to write off her taxes, and let me have the one she’s in currently. Then, in the meantime dh will be living with our friends or my other sis to save up some money and keep our benefits. Hopefully he will be moved down there no later than Dec. 1st, so everything is moving rapidly at this point.

To top it off, we have a marriage conference to go to this weekend and can’t get out of it, so I literally have 2.5 days to pack our house up for storing everything for who knows how long. Exciting, eh?

As always, I love the possibilities of change and really embrace whatever is coming. It just doesn’t scare me or bother me. I don’t think I’m brave or strong, it’s just my personality. I hope I will be able to ship the ‘puter down there so I can keep in touch with my Shamrocks, and my friends and my pookie, too.

I won’t log on again unless something changes, before I get to VA.

Ciao!